436 



DOMESTIC ECONOMY. 



[CUAP. IV. 



Another plan is to pour over the Lre;id a sweetened Lnttcr gravy, or wine 

 sauce, or the juice of stewed fruit or preserves. All are good. 



A very e.xcelleut food for delicate stomachs may be made by sweetening 

 water, cold or hot, with refined sugar, and crumbling into it stale bread. 



Bread and cider used to be a favorite food in Yankee land in old times. 

 Sweeten the cider, and crumb into it toasted bread. 



Sometimes a piece of codfish or a slice of fat salt pork, roasted upon 

 live coals, will tempt a convalescent appetite when nothing else will answer. 



In making porridge of corn or oatmeal, be careful to cook it well. Do 

 not think it done till it has boiled an hour. 



Ibice gruel does not need so much cooking. It should not be given to a 

 person of constipated habits. Simple boiled rice is a delicate food for the 

 sick. 



Arrowroot, tapioca, farina, and corn starch are all of the same character — 

 highly concentrated food. A good gruel may be made of either, and fla- 

 vored with sugar, nutmeg, lemon, or whatever would be agreeable. Stale 

 bread, very dry, crumbed and made into a gruel, is pei-liaps the most di- 

 gestible. Stale bread, toasted very dry and brown, and then steeped in wa- 

 ter a long time, makes a good drink for the sick, and furnishes considerable 

 nourishment. 



In all cases of sickness, when the appetite craves fruit we would give it, 

 ripe and fresh in its season, or preserved and cooked in the most simple 

 manner. Apples for the sick should always be roasted. So should po- 

 tatoes. 



If the friends of the sick possess a little skill and neatness in the prepara- 

 tion of dishes, the patient need never say, " What shall I eat ?" 



The following is well relislied by some appetites, but we doubt its di- 

 gestibility : Shave a good crisp head of cabbage as fine as possible ; add a 

 tablespoonful of horseradish to each quart of shaved cabbage ; let one pint 

 of vinegar come to a boil ; have ready three well-beaten eggs with a little 

 salt ; pour the eggs into the vinegar and stir until cooked ; then pour it 

 over the cabbage and set it away, as it is better when cold. This will keep 

 some daj's, and is always ready. 



Roasting a CnicKEN may be thought a very simple operation, but, 

 in our opinion, not one in ton of modern housekeepers can do it to per- 

 fection. First, because they have no conveniences. The abominable cook- 

 ing-stove has sj^oiled many a dish, and none more so than this of a roast 

 chicken, which never has been and never will be roasted to perfection in 

 any other way than tied i;p by the legs swinging by a string before a wood 

 fire, dripping its gravy into a pan in which there is a little cream and a 

 lump of butter, with which the roast is to be basted from time to time until 

 the skin is brown and flesli thoroughly cooked. It is this cooking in the 

 open air that gives it the peculiar richness. If a chicken must be roasted or 

 baked in a stove-oven, it should be done with the oven door open. With 

 some stoves it can be much better done in an open pan set down before the 



